Very Busy Times!

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Since the last post we have definitely been keeping ourselves busy, hence why we've not posted for a while. This will be a bit of a long one! At the time of finishing work, it felt as though we had all the time in the world to get everything moved and sorted, and naively we imagined the moving out process would be really chilled and easy. Obviously the reality differed somewhat, and it went a little something like this...

On Friday the 19th we rode the bike (December) down to Sussex. After managing to nurse and protect it through three years in Manchester, we spent the week prior to the journey being really paranoid that it would get stolen, so when Oli opened the garage on the final day we both gave an impromptu loud cheer, which must have surprised the neighbours! Saturday was my birthday, and we were lucky enough to have a beautiful and warm sunny day. We spent this walking around the Sussex countryside with the dogs, and then went in to Lewes to meet Emma and Sam for a drink and a curry at Chaula's in the evening. It was a brilliant day and made us both remember how much we love that part of the world.

Tuesday, we travelled back up to Manchester to pack up the flat and move out. After one final Domino's with the lovely Harriet, Jas, Laini, Amice and Amy we got properly stuck into sorting everything on Wednesday. We have moved so many times in the last few years, and every time the lesson is the same... it will take far longer than you think! Although we had kept the flat clean, the final moving out sorting still took forever. We may have loved it, but we would be the first to admit that it wasn't the fanciest of places. Pretty much everything in there looks grubby through age, so deep cleaning was a bit of a thankless task.

Our original plan was to have everything done on Wednesday and to leave on Thursday, but not only did getting everything sorted take forever, Oli's external PhD examiner decided to mention that he had not received the document sent to him six weeks ago. Oli then had to spend Thursday running around printing and go into uni on Friday to sort it out.

The main problem however, was that we had to get all our stuff out, and had only one carload to do it! This would have been fine with an estate car, but poor Maui was not the ideal vehicle for the job!Through determination, last minute freecycling, force and ignorance we managed to get all our things in the car. Alas, I would not fit in with it so was relegated to the train. Oli had to do the drive to Doncaster on his own, all the time hoping that the car wasn't going to bottom out!

Relaxing that evening at Oli's Grandma's house felt amazing after the hassle of moving. Luckily, we were able to dump a couple of boxes at hers before setting off, which meant I could be promoted back to the car for the next stage of the journey.

We arrived in Cambridge yesterday afternoon, and spent the evening with our friends Andrew and Joe. They were excellent hosts and we were treated to delicious homemade pizza and plenty of G&T! After food, we decided to head into town for a drink and a wander around. Oli and I hadn't been to Cambridge many times before, and had never seen the centre at night. It really is a beautiful city, and the architecture looked absolutely stunning all lit up. We had a great evening and it really felt like the start of the holiday!

Luckily today we had all escaped hangovers and pedaled in to town for a spot of punting. This was pretty much disaster free, apart from Oli getting the pole stuck in the river bed, leaving us floating helplessly around. Thankfully, some other amateurs managed to grab it for us and bring it back so disaster was averted!

We're now back in Plumpton, where I am sure the holiday feeling will quickly evaporate in a haze of insurance documents and visa forms!